Gaza on my Mind

When I opened this blog it was not to pour out my everyday frustrations and joys, my political preferences, etc. I opened this blog to review fiction, which to me often can speak the truth, and denaturalize ideological determination of everyday life.

I started writing a new novel last summer, a novel about a Palestinian boy Yusuf, born in Gaza, adopted by an American nurse from North Carolina and renamed into Joseph. When  wrote the first chapters I thought I would go to Gaza, spend some time in Palestine and Israel, which are the holy land for billions of people world over. I thought the situation was getting better. My mistake, your mistake, everyone’s mistake, isn’t it?

Instead of fiction, this entry is about real blood and failure to act. I feel impotent. I can say a few words, but bigger words by bigger men and women have accomplished nothing. Watching everything from a safe place it seems to me that thoughts and action, language and action are truly split. There is such a thing as empty, idle talk. Maybe it is still only the word of God that is pure action. I wish I could hear Him speak.

I have friends religious and secular, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and what not. I do not give a damn about Hamas and Israeli politicians and soldiers. The moment I see a dead kid, or a cringing-against-a-crumbling-wall kid, or a dusty-lips kid, or an at-gun-point kid, I do not give a damn about the reasons of the vicious individual or even a community that made the kid that way, his or her hands should not be able to use a fork. I do not care who started what, because one thing I believe is true, those kids did not start it. Whether you are an Israeli soldier or a wannabe suicide killer aiming at a coffee shop or a bus, you just got an entry in my black book, and all rationalization in the world cannot help you.

Not only are the rocket-shooting, tank-driving, gun-firing, gut-kicking guilty right now, but also ever-babbling politicians of the world that spend our money to fly to conventions and say they feel “sad” and then nothing. The word “must” as in “must-stop-fighting” and “must-find-a-peaceful-solution” does not entail action in itself. It’s idle talk. The US soldiers from those videos in support of the war in Iraq always say how proud they are to be fighting to bring peace and democracy and how they are willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. Well maybe someone should send those soldiers, and the soldiers from all over the world, mix them, send them to enter the region to cease all the weapons, secure the Palestinian kids, secure the Israeli kids, whoever needs securing. Where are the wannabe martyrs now? Why don’t they stand in front of tanks and gun fire? Where are the suicide bombers? I’d like to see a wall of them in front of the victimized kids rather than on a local bus. All those who found it necessary to rage against silly Danish cartoons, if you really want to show you are good Muslims come and stand in front of those Palestinian kids, those Israeli kids too. The Jews who like to talk about their victim-hood like we Bosnians and all other peoples who have suffered from occupation and extermination, why not raise your voices and use your bodies to defend other people like you. Are national agendas really on your priority lists. Killing one innocent person is like killing the entire world. We say we need reason to solve the conflict, but it is nothing but reason that keeps it aflame. All we do is reason to justify our actions. Reason, the fickle tool of destruction, reason the damn pliable tool and a turncoat.

Nuff said, I keep babbling myself. Words do nothing to soothe the anguish, to mend wounds, or wash dry lips. But maybe one word could be used over and again once the rifles are packed again and tanks parked deep under ground: Sorry. Everyone should say it to the other no matter what. Sorry. Such an irrational word, especially in a complete sentence: I‘m sorry.